


Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Seventh November

by Helium5Admission



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, third person narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helium5Admission/pseuds/Helium5Admission
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes plans a birthday surprise for Watson...which backfires. Insights into Holmes's mind and history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Holmes stood back and surveyed his work with a private smile. His smile was private only partially because of the quiet and solitude in the flat. It was also private because of the secret and subtle nature of his handicraft. Indeed, Watson’s room, to the uninformed, looked as neat and undisturbed as it always did. Holmes had covered his tracks, he thought, quite perfectly. John would notice nothing out of place, until Holmes decided it was time.  
Holmes’s smile faltered out of existence, but his eyes were still gleaming with amusement as he imagined his friend’s surprise later on in the evening. He was certain that Watson had never had any suspicion of how rich Sherlock’s sense of humour was. Most people, of course, assumed that the only people who were humourous were those who laughed out loud, or who were constantly telling funny stories—who were “witty.” But his was an exquisitely subtle mind. He was among the best equipped to appreciate the ironies that abounded in human behaviour. He noticed myriad details that the common man failed to recognize. In short, though Holmes had a sharper wit than most, he considered exercising his mind only for the amusement of others to be a waste. Discrepancies of mind and behaviour, of intent and result, were filed away as curiosities or insights that would likely be of use one day. Of course, the petty vagaries of language—disparities of meaning and sound—were beneath his interest unless they had bearing on a case.  
Only when manipulating others, persuading them to co-operate, did Holmes employ his sense of popular humour. In private, though, he was fond of using sarcasm or irony on his bosom companion, his Boswell—and in time, Watson had grown more sensitive to this: one of the achievements that gave Holmes the most quiet satisfaction in recent years.  
Yes, Sherlock did care about Watson: cared quite deeply, really. He was indignant whenever readers and reviewers called his friend a dullard; he was, as ordinary people went, an intelligent man, and he had grown gradually more observant and insightful during the years they had spent together. His remarks were, indeed, frequently helpful, and when Holmes asked Watson for his analysis of the situation at hand—though Watson had usually missed some crucial points through inattention—his conjectures helped Holmes to get an idea of how a layperson would think of the crime, and how the sharper members of the general public would interpret the clues that were easily spotted. If Watson missed some bit of evidence, it was fairly certain that just about anybody else would also pass it by as well, and so Holmes would not have to worry much about others interfering with his own investigation, as their ignorance of key points would lead them in the wrong direction.  
In addition, Watson had spent more time in the world, among its creatures, than Holmes had, particularly in the sense that Holmes was both more often in solitude as opposed to out of doors, and in that he was so often withdrawn from the world, absorbed in his thoughts—virtually existing in his own mental world. He was less used to being among regular people, interacting with them. Watson was more sensitive to moods and social patterns, and saw human relationships from the inside, as opposed to Holmes, who saw them from a safe distance, as if from a promontory—he could see the larger patterns, but missed the details he would have noticed if he were closer and more familiar with them. These were the strengths of subtle perception that Watson excelled in; and in numerous cases, Holmes had found his reflections invaluable.  
More than this, Holmes was well aware of the loyal friendship that Watson always had maintained for him. He was endlessly generous in his friendly love, and tolerated all his atypical behavior—his moods and abstractions—with dogged determination to give Holmes all support, no matter how inscrutable he found his friend, for he could intuit that a mind so uncommon naturally rendered the man a distinct and unique social creature, and despite these irregularities (here Holmes chuckled a bit to himself), Holmes was nevertheless worthy of his friendship, and though Holmes was sparing in his expressions of affection, Watson still was aware that the affection existed, and let trust carry him through the long periods when depression and ennui robbed Holmes of every cheerful thought.  
Holmes was sure enough of Watson’s support to feel little need to secure it with constant expressions of gratitude or reciprocity. Watson would never give up on him—probably, not even if Holmes made a deliberate and explicit effort to alienate him, would Watson’s stalwart determination to remain by his side be entirely deterred. His patience would endure in hopes of Holmes’s having a change of heart. In fact, Holmes mused, one could think of Watson as Holmes’s steadfast pet. In a sense, at least.  
While he was less demonstrative of his affection for Watson, Holmes did trust his friend as he had never trusted any other. He expressed this by allowing Watson to enter his private life and thoughts as nobody ever had done, even his own elder brother.  
Without needing to turn his head, Holmes turned his eyes to the clock by Watson’s bed. He had cut it a little close, he figured, but he was done for now, and Watson had not arrived early. The doctor was, in fact, due immediately; barring last-minute cases at his clinic, he would arrive … Holmes watched the clock’s second hand … _now_. As Holmes silently swung Watson’s door closed, he heard with a fleeting smile of satisfaction the sound of the front door opening, and the distinctive one-two stomp as Watson knocked the weather’s detritus off his shoes onto the front mat. Holmes stole back to his own room, where his bed clothes were already thrown open in anticipation of this moment. Tossing his dressing gown onto the chair and stepping out of his slippers, Holmes slid silently into bed. He dipped his hand into the washbasin on the side table and dabbed the warm water onto his face and forehead. Then he lay back on the pillows and feigned sleep, waiting for Watson to step upstairs and check on him. Behind his closed eyelids, Holmes’s eyeballs were alert and active. Having prepared everything already, he resisted the urge to review his plans. He calmed his nerves, slowed his breathing, and anticipated his friend’s reactions—for there would, if things went smoothly, be a series of them.  
The wait was taking longer than Holmes had expected. With some impatience, Holmes tried to sharpen his sense of hearing, casting his ears around the house for signs of movement. He finally discerned some activity downstairs—sounds of forks clanking against china, the sound of liquid being poured into a glass. Behind his closed lids, Holmes glared. _Having a bit of a tuck-in?_ Holmes asked John mentally. He grumbled to himself for a number of minutes, still hurt that Watson would think of himself when his friend Sherlock was so ill. His grumbling sounded of anger, but it represented self-pity more accurately. In his imagination, for the moment, Holmes forgot that he was only _pretending_ to be sick; he had thrown himself into the role, much as Mr Gillette was said to do upon the boards at the Globe.  
Holmes was reminded suddenly of an incident from his childhood. Sherlock was the baby of the family, only 14 to his brother’s 23. In the heat of early July, Sherlock was celebrating his own birthday, but not at home, as he had in previous years. The family was instead at Cambridge to attend Mycroft’s graduation ceremony. Their mother was crying, emotional woman that she was, as Father shook his elder son’s hand. Graduating with honours today, with degrees in chemistry, biology, and the classics. Unprecedented. And now Mycroft would be off with his commission to serve in Her Majesty’s army in the Boer War. Though young Sherlock considered himself above petty jealousy, on one level at least, he still felt, childishly, a sense of injury, a craving for attention, a sense of pain that his handsome elder brother would steal his own glory on this of all days.  
He was conscious that his mind was not inferior to his brother’s. He could read both Hebrew and Aramaic better, in fact, and he had clearly a sixth sense about botany, an intuition that had resulted in successful grafts and gorgeous bouquets that had so pleased Mother. Bitterly, sitting in the back of the hansom cab as his brother rode proudly in front, Sherlock brooded to himself. _I’ll be better educated than Mycroft someday_ , he thought, _and before I reach his age. And I won’t need mentors or a fancy set of diplomae to prove it, either._ Surprising himself out of his reverie, Sherlock realized that that day had influenced the course of his life: his feverish quest to self-educate himself, his rejection of a job in the military despite his handiness with guns and swords, and his abiding, though usually sublimated, resentment of his brother, who was again prospering in a job for Her Majesty the Queen.  
Did he hate Mycroft? Motionless, Sherlock mentally shook his head, _no_. But he had never gotten over that jealousy. Tall, handsome, popular, dapper—Mycroft stood in the sun, while Sherlock had always seemed to hang in the shadows. Mycroft’s time in the army had only enhanced his effulgence. He met important people, had beautiful girl friends, laughed and learned how to be charming in front of guests—both fellow guests, and eventually, his own. Sherlock convinced himself long ago that he neither wanted nor needed any of this glamour, when at heart, he felt as if he would never be able to attain any of these. Even their hair colours went along with their personalities. Mycroft, a sunny red; Sherlock, a somber black. Mycroft, a ruddy, healthy complexion; Sherlock, pallid and rather sickly looking, like one of that Irishman Stoker’s vampires.  
So Sherlock had grown to manhood, gradually becoming more self-isolated and introspective, never given to smiling or idle conversation. Mycroft had never moved back home again, but their parents, sympathetic and supportive as they always were, would not leave off with their solicitous questions, intrusive ones as Sherlock deemed them. Having only their experience with Mycroft as a guide, they thought Sherlock a strange adolescent. No friends, always closed in his study (in truth, as a small but personally glorious victory, Sherlock had managed to convince his parents to let him use Mycroft’s larger room as a study), good at fencing and other required sports at school but never enjoying being a member of any team. They got slowly used to loving Sherlock from a distance; eventually, when Sherlock asked to be allowed to move out, they allowed it with a sense of pity and generosity, stipulating that he would have to become self-supporting within five year, or else move back. Though never gregarious, Sherlock was nothing if not resourceful, and he readily agreed, assured that he would be able to find a way when the time came.  
His parents thought him merely self-absorbed and desirous of privacy, but they never suspected the other side of this wish for independence. Sherlock had suffered his own humiliations and losses in personal relations—some public, but the larger part in the secrecy of his own mind—and in short was low on self-confidence when it came to interacting with people. He was very good, though, at feigning it, but usually felt relieved when visitors left his apartment, and often a bit shaky, too. He had, in time, managed to set himself up as a consulting detective here at Baker Street after attracting the attention of Scotland Yard, and his self-sustenance had become more ample with the success of Watson’s chronicles. The consultant was now fairly well known to those who were interested in the furtherance, or the prevention of, crime. Like his friend the doctor, he also did well off of referrals.  
And where was Watson now? The sounds below had ceased, but he could now hear footsteps ascending to the first floor. Automatically, Holmes categorized the sounds: one older woman; one man with a slight limp: the familiar tread of Watson’s shoes. They were walking with some deliberation, as if carrying something heavy or liable to spill, or else they were trying to walk stealthily. If it were something heavy in their grip, there was one item per person, for the steps were not synchronized. As he thought of birthdays, the thought struck him that Watson was Sherlock’s sole tether that linked him to the common ground of humankind; that if Watson were to break that connection, Sherlock would be separated forever from society, floating away to live independently and isolated, a hermit in a hot-air balloon that became its own shuttered microcosm. Living in his private mind all the time, he mused, he would be bored to death, or else go mad.  
And here was Watson, with the aid of Mrs Hudson, going up to enjoy dinner in his own quarters. He could imagine he felt a knife sawing away at that tether already. As the footsteps reached Holmes’s doorstep—Watson’s room was farther on down the hallway—Holmes held his breath, his eyes closed firmly but without stress, listening intently. He was already trying to rationalize the situation to cheer himself up, by telling himself that Watson only had this one special day to treat himself like this, on the anniversary of his natal day, and that he would surely wish to dine with him to-morrow. This, even as he already had started to mourn the only close friendship of his life—a death knell, likely, for his own life. In such a situation, his previous, fleeting irritation that the timing of his surprise might be ruined if Watson failed to come to Sherlock’s room first, seemed insignificant now.  
Sherlock only had a moment to puzzle once again at himself—on one hand, he was supremely confident of Watson’s loyalty, while on the other, he was ready to assume that Watson had rejected him without a moment’s notice—before his door was swung wide open, startling him, and the gentle voice of Dr John Watson called his name softly into the darkness, as if sent from Heaven to rescue him from his own self-pity. Sherlock was strangely moved by this; without reliable Watson at his side, Holmes often thought, he really would not be able to face his visitors any longer—his responsibilities—his own self-hatred.  
And, with a vastly improved mood, in about half an hour’s time, he felt nearly giddy with relief: fulfilled and appreciated again. “Ah,” announced Holmes, “your presence has quite dispersed the miasma of my nightmares, my friend, and I am feeling much...much better. But your _cause celebre_ today takes precedence over my own,” Holmes considered fleetingly that the formality of his diction was typical of his old habit of distancing himself from others, operating again even now at this ill-suited moment— “we must enjoy this evening in a more suitable fashion. Let us away!”  
Dressing quickly—and reflecting how odd it was that he felt no self-consciousness in front of Watson—Holmes prepared for a night out with his bosom friend. He had, as a backup plan, already made reservations for them both at Sardi’s and then at the Opera, both in private areas, so as to minimize the likelihood of meeting others and needing to engage in frivolous banalities. Before leaving, Holmes prepared an envelope and wrote Mrs Hudson’s name on it. Inside the envelope there were two items. First, a note—

> My dear Mrs Hudson,
> 
> I am so grateful for your efforts tonight on my behalf, on the occasion of my sickness. You and Dr Watson have quite revived me, and I am sincerely grateful.  
>  I fear that I have sadly made a rather grievous mess in Dr Watson’s room tonight, the results of a slightly disastrous set of birthday plans that went awry. I am most dreadfully sorry for this, and I am doubly so at the necessity of requesting that you assist me in restoring his room to its customary pristine shape. Tonight, please.  
>  I expect that there will be no real damage to his property or to your own—curtains, furniture, so on and so forth—but the work may be distasteful, and I am aware of the lateness of the hour. I really have to beg your forgiveness for this, and to oblige myself still further, I need to adjure you not to mention the change, or the reason for it, to Dr Watson. If he asks—which, truthfully, I doubt will happen since I have every confidence in your ability to reverse all damage—I shall undertake to answer all his questions myself.  
>  In hopes that this little present will go some small way to my attestation of my gratitude and my personal obligation to you, I shall remove myself and my friend the doctor from the premises until at least eleven of the clock.  
>  I will explain later.

> Your most humbly—  
>  Sherlock Holmes

 

Inside the envelope, Mrs Hudson also found a £20 note.  
She did an _exemplary_ cleaning job.  
Holmes never did explain, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for lack of research into things like the friends' actual canonical birthdays; since this is non canon anyway, consider this an alternate dimension's Holmes and Watson et al, if you wish!  
> I have to concede that my image of Mycroft is based partly on the "Sherlock" (BBC) show's portrayal of the character, at least in appearance.  
> Comments are welcome.


	2. Chapter Two (WIP)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a second year, Holmes tries to prepare a surprise for his best friend's birthday; we hear more about his earlier life and his childhood relationship with his brother Mycroft. Recollections of Holmes's encounter with the fearsome Dr. Roylott.

It seemed to Holmes that in the fifty weeks since that birthday, Holmes and Watson’s friendship had grown in strength and intensity, even as Holmes’s ever-tenuous grasp of the public’s ways of interacting had dwindled now, he hardly ventured to entertain any guests or visitors—or even clients—unless Watson were with him. At times, he felt himself liking his guests, and wished he could have a chance to get to know them better—he tried to be funny, to be winning—to make a good impression the first time so that later times would be easier; however, he simultaneous kept a mental running commentary of criticism, and each attempt was decried as a pathetic failure. They always seemed grateful and usually Holmes was capable of solving their minor mysteries with ease, but unless they needed more help later, they never paid any further calls on Sherlock: confirmation, to Holmes’s subconscious mind, that he had indeed failed to win their genuine friendship. Holmes relied on Watson to help smooth matters over. When Holmes got tongue-tied, Watson was always able to sense the perfect expression to speak out—at least, if he understood what Holmes had in mind, and that was variable, as Holmes often did not share his thoughts before he was absolutely certain he was right. Holmes was, in fact, anxious not to lose face with John, and in some cases, Holmes’s string of conclusions, assumptions, and such were mere hunches—so very fragile that he dared not tell John; Sherlock had a practiced poker-face--he had literally practiced it before his looking-glass regularly, and found it boosted his self-image--and did have adequate confidence in his own ability to act as if he were in control, and to think of a course of action in case of failure. Further, Holmes cultivated a somewhat cold air of abstraction and aloofness in order to discourage excessive chatter. At any rate, John was so good with visitors, and presumably, with his patients, that he could always help to make them more at ease, easily compensating for Holmes’s taciturnity.

One unannounced visitor, in particular, had shaken Holmes’s trust in himself and his capability of dealing with people when they were not predisposed to treat civilly with him. When Doctor Roylott, that malicious Samson of modern times, had sought Sherlock out at the Baker Street flat, Holmes had never needed his “poker face” so much—he felt suddenly that flight would be the best option, as he dreaded confrontations, and obviously, violent ones were especially odious and alarming. He knew he could handle himself in a fist fight, and he could brave-face it out if he really needed to reckon with an angry client, suspect, or criminal maniac. He was brave and cool-headed in the face of danger, and he could keep his head as he kept his real emotions away from his face. But after every confrontation, when he had attained privacy, Holmes let his guard down and allowed himself the luxury of the panic attack he often had to thrust brutally down below his threshold of conscious thought, lest he lose his head—something he wished _never_ to do in life, and most of all when and where he could be observed—a _facade_ of calm strength was vital not only to his consultancy as a business, but to his sense of self in public. He had worked hard to establish a reputation as a cool, calculated thinker, stern and calm and rational—a man of iron will and unflappable demeanour. He refused to betray his shameful trepidation to anybody; his brother had caught him unaware just once, as a young man—Mycroft had never told anyone. That was, in short, the reason why Doctor Roylott’s appearance, though it had alarmed John, was assumed by Watson to have failed to quail Sherlock. It was all the detective could do to bluff it through, laughing at Roylott instead of crying out in alarm. Hand to hand, perhaps, Holmes would have been the victor, though the thought of Roylott’s hands on him was insupportable, but the factors of rage—which Roylott was clearly prone to—and panic, which could add an edge of power sometimes, but was not reliable, nor tractable to the service of combat—these factors made the results of a physical fight less certain. Holmes could tell that a man like that could not be trusted to use only honourable means. He might force the door when Holmes was sleeping—land a blow upon his head, and Holmes would never even wake up from the assault. Roylott might even use the same poker he had bent out of shape to deal Holmes a final injury. After Roylott stormed out, Holmes had nearly fainted with the relief of it, and his confident facade slipped entirely way. It was not until a while later that Holmes had even recalled that Watson was still with him—his friend had stepped across the room to steady Holmes, and he later told Sherlock that his face had been quite drained of colour. Forcing himself to rally around, Holmes forced himself to shrug the incident off. He had needed his rather childish display of strength to help himself regain at least a shred of confidence—but as Holmes bent that poker back to a semblance of straightness, his hands shook with shock as much as with the effort. He would, even under normal, calm circumstances, not have felt amused by it precisely, but he was well conscious of the irony of his emotional need to restore the poker concurrently with his social need to force from his lips a frown of dismay, back into something like the straight line of what is called a “poker face”—and one could imagine the line of the poker as the lips of such a face! Besides—as Holmes told Watson, moments after he had achieved this feat of physical as well as emotional strength—he could not let himself be “bent out of shape” by such a beast as Roylott—Mrs Hudson would throw a fit if she found out that Holmes and Watson had allowed a hostile stranger—he could hardly be called a “guest” or even a “visitor”—into her house, and allowed him to start mangling her property. She might decide to evict them both, and that would never do.

It had bolstered Holmes’s spirits immeasurably when Watson had declared that if they ever met with such a disaster, Watson would fervently wish to find new quarters with Holmes, so that they could continue as a team. Holmes had responded warmly—especially considering his normally reserved demeanour. “You must know, my dear friend, that should I live a century longer, I never would be able to find another companion that I liked or cared for half as much as you.” It was hard for Holmes to imagine that in the four months after that day, Mrs Hudson could possibly have failed to notice the bent poker—Holmes sometimes spent a few minutes trying, in vain, to make it totally straight, but it probably would never again look as if it were still new—but she had never let on; presumably, once it was cold enough, she would catch on the first time she stoked the fire. In fact, Watson, half-jokingly, had presented Sherlock with a newly-purchased poker, gleaming with newness, but as it would never have passed for the same item, Holmes had elected not to make the substitution; he much preferred to let the incident pass to confessing the matter of the disfigured poker to his landlady. But Roylott was never to return, and the friends remained in their snug hutch undisturbed.

In truth, it seemed to Holmes, Watson was closer to him than his brother—maybe more than any possible brother. The sense of a need for competition was ever an impediment to closeness with Mycroft; it remained in the corner if Sherlock’s mind even when the brothers were not in direct communication. Mycroft’s most salient quality was his piercing intelligence, the one characteristic of Holmes’s own sense of self that he had real confidence in, ordinarily—but when they were together, Mycroft and Sherlock tended to tackle the same conundra—Holmes could not help testing himself, his speed, against his brother’s. As for Mycroft’s other characteristics—social suavity, sartorial flair, good looks—Holmes had, with some dejection and bitterness, resigned himself to the role of a spectator rather than anything like a rival; he no longer put any effort into what the world called charm, save when a case called for it. Now, in Watson, Holmes found a counterpart who was his ultimate complement. Watson was a capable, competent, and patient man who could co-operate with him in all necessary ways with his work that involved working with clients and others involved in his investigations. Replete with humility, Watson was always willing to help, always did his own level best to observe, process, and try to reach his own conclusions about what had really occurred during a case. He never interfered with Sherlock’s cogitation, never asserted that his own thoughts were more valid than Sherlock’s, but when asked, John would promptly share his ideas and observations in clear terms, verifying what Holmes had noticed, and offering his hypotheses for Holmes to evaluate—this helped to solidify Holmes’s thinking processes and eliminate false chains of logic. Frequently, over the past year, they had sat up until the wee hours, discussing and poring over the facts of a case. Sometimes this took the form of a Socratic dialogue—for instance, when Holmes asked Watson what he made of the brackets that secured the bed in Roylott’s house to the floor.

In this manner, Holmes became Watson’s mentor, helping him to follow his own paths of thinking via his guiding questions. At other times, Watson had in fact felt quite sure he had solved the case, and in his soft-spoken way challenged Holmes to consider Watson’s logic—and, in time, as Watson learned Holmes’s methods, this had become sharper and less aberrant—and identify its weak points, but always respectfully, without frowning; never in a hostile or defensive way, Watson was a partner, not a competitor, in solving cases—but always willing to be the junior partner. In all other ways, Watson was Holmes’s partner as well—indeed, it was not too inappropriate to say that Watson was the detective’s _helpmeet_. Each had his role, with Mrs Hudson’s supplemental co-operation—and each was content in that role. Holmes took the nominally dominant role in the partnership—despite the temptation to compare it to a marriage, Holmes resisted classifying Watson as his “wife”—not because such a characterization repelled him, for it did not, but because the traditional division of roles between men and women were arbitrary . . . and, in the end, meaningless. Holmes had had ample evidence that both classes of humans were capable of all manner of planning, managing, and carrying out any sort of endeavour—it was only tradition and the common mind’s lack of the habit of thinking that limited them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is incomplete; this was written for NaNoWriMo, but my work was interrupted. Still, I'd welcome your comments. If I'm encouraged I'll get back to work on the story sooner rather than later!  
> I always picture Jeremy Brett as Holmes...ever since I saw the show. Before that, I had my own image, which sadly I think I can hardly recall anymore. Alas!


End file.
